Hi Thomas,

I should have said "... .Net as an alternative in the markets where I work." I work in markets where non-domain experts can not do the programming and create a first-rank product." In those (two -- for different reasons) markets, having a team of professional static-language developers will not work either economically and/or practically. For those markets, languages with lots of hoops and reduced flexibility in handling data just don't fit with the chosen constraints.

And I have to agree with those who say programming everything yet once gain for every platform isn't practical. Same two reasons: money, and practicality. If there's 1 domain expert in a given area, that person should only have to write it once, using 1 technology. That's the whole idea of domain expert programmers.

That said, there are large concerns with simpler programs and high margins than can afford to do traditional programming models on multiple platforms. They can be less efficient, and still succeed. Although basing one's future on Xamarin, which is tied to .Net, seems shakier (because of the MS connection) to me than basing one's future on Lianja, one has to have a huge amount of respect for Miguel's track record, and the tools look really neat. Limited range (Moonlight, we hardly knew ye), but good tools.

Since the first edition will be free, you'll have a chance to decide for yourself whether you really want to risk your capital. :) Knowing you, you'd get it just so you could tell me all the places where I'm partly or totally wrong. :) Which is great: it's all information, and in fact we'll be providing a place for the feedback to take place.

Hank



>>You realize that would be 4 year's subscription, right? <s> Anyway, the first month's edition, scheduled now for 7/31 (it will release with V.1 of the app builder) will be free. While it will have all the pieces needed to evaluate the product, it won't have the annotated language and class documentation (which will probably have to be pulled out to a separate eBook as it grows, but both the regular book and the annotated language/class docs will be part of the same subscription).
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>count me in as subscriber #22 (family mixin subclass of the famous 42)
>
>>
>>My biggest wrong, by far, was thinking that .Net would be the solution for the future. To that end I supported VFP.Net and IronPython. The first disappeared, and 3 months after it said it would support dynamic languages, MS dropped IronPython. Lesson learned: I haven't look at .Net as an alternative since then -- and the .Net story has gotten worse since then, not better.
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>There may be more life in it than you saw - although in part via Xamarin, and in part via IKVM.
>And I still believe some of the faults you perceived in .Net as such were really in the way MS toolkits/wizards are set up ;-)
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>regards
>
>thomas